Shill Bidding

[ullmandds]

In light of constant talks of shill bidding in the hobby...in addition to me being sick and laid up at home...I've been giving the cincept of "shill bidding" more thought.

Shilling is rampant and in many cases allowed in the auction world. Whether its antiques, collectibles, art or real estate...shilling seems to be a commonly used strategy to ensure the hammer price ends up close to or above sellers "reserve" so as to avoid a higher % of "no sales" which is bad for everyone.

So why should this hobby be immune? I'm in no way advocating this in any way. I think the key is the "reserve." And the problem is that most of the time the reserve is only known to the actually consigner and sometimes the auctioneer...but not revealed to the public.

And the purpose is obviously to encourage spirited bidding. And how boring would an auction be if every card had a published reserve around the retail value.

I recently won a card from PWCC...and there was what appeared to me to be very suspicious...likely shill bidding. I questioned brent and he agreed the bidding was unusual...but he had seen this type of very small incremental bidding to reveal the winning bid before.

And...he said that he knew for sure the next highest bid was legitimate...sooooo. While I appreciated his time and thought I still was a little buggered thinking as we all do...I could have likely gotten the card cheaper.

But maybe this just isn't realistic in this day and age with information and data everywhere. It seems as of the last 10-15 years many have come onto this board asking what a psa 3 cobb(red)...for example is worth...expecting there to be a "market" price for one as if it were an oz. of gold or something.

And we all know there are many other factors that go into the equation than just grade.

So will shill bidding always be around and might it even propogate further?

Sure seems so...unless auctioneers intervene.

I stumbled upon this scientific analysis of shill bidding and possible ways to combat it. IT's very interesting although I skipped all of the calculus...it made my head spin. Maybe frank can explain it to us.

http://oz.stern.nyu.edu/seminar/fa01/1108.pdf